Look up at this magnificent red brick corner building, featuring soaring arched windows and intricately sculpted terra cotta faces gazing out from the facade. You are standing in front of the Center for Brooklyn History, an institution that has been guarding the borough's secrets and stories since the middle of the American Civil War.
Back in 1863, a local heavy hitter named Henry Pierrepont founded this place as the Long Island Historical Society. But a fancy society needs a fancy headquarters. In the late 1870s, the society hosted a high stakes design competition. Fourteen architects battled it out, and the winner was George B. Post. He gave them this stunning Romanesque Revival masterpiece, completed in 1881. Post went all out with terra cotta, which is a type of fired clay perfect for molding detailed architectural ornaments. He hired sculptor Olin Levi Warner to create an absolutely wild roster of busts for the exterior. If you look closely at the building, you will spot Michelangelo, Shakespeare, Benjamin Franklin, and somehow, even a Viking. If you want a better view of those sculpted clay details without straining your neck, check out the photo on your phone.
The outside is impressive, but the inside is widely considered one of New York's greatest nineteenth-century interiors. Glance at your screen for a sneak peek into the magnificent Othmer Library, boasting grand wooden pillars and endless shelves of local lore. That library is a treasure hunter's dream. It holds the personal papers of the famous abolitionist clergyman Henry Ward Beecher, massive collections on the Brooklyn firefighting units, and an enormous catalog of historical maps.
Speaking of maps, my favorite story from this place sounds like a movie plot. In 2010, the staff were doing a routine cataloging project. They were just digging through the archives, minding their own business, when they stumbled across a rolled up, completely uncatalogued map from the year 1770 by a British army officer named Bernard Ratzer. It was an incredibly rare, perfectly preserved colonial map of the city, just sitting right there under their noses for who knows how long.
The institution officially became the Center for Brooklyn History in 2020 when it merged with the Brooklyn Public Library. Today, they serve tens of thousands of school kids a year and host groundbreaking exhibitions, including the very first gallery in the United States entirely dedicated to oral history, which opened with the stories of Brooklyn's Vietnam veterans.
If you want to poke around inside, they are open Monday through Saturday, but keep in mind they are closed on Sundays.
Feel free to linger here. Once you are set, let us move on.
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